He was no more
fortunate with the new King than he had been with the old. Despairing of
place or patronage, he turned, with his brave spirit unquenched as by the
record sufficiently appears, to completing this new thing among books.
_Don Quixote_ was probably finished by the beginning of 1604, though some
further time elapsed, as it seems, before the author had courage to go to
print. His genius had lain fallow for twenty years. He was now old, and
had written nothing, or at least published nothing, since _Galatea_. What
fame was left to him he had earned as a poet among many poets. As an
author, if he was remembered at all, it was in a line wholly different
from that which he now essayed. There is reason to believe that the
manuscript of the new book was in circulation among those who called
themselves the author's friends, as was the custom of the age, before he
found a patron and a publisher.[6] The publisher was got at last in
Francisco Robles, the King's printer, to whom the copyright was sold for
ten years.[7] The patron appeared in the person of the Duque de Bejar, a
nobleman described by a writer of that age--Cristobal de Mesa--as himself
both a poet and a valiant soldier. The choice was not altogether a happy
one, for the Duke of Bejar might be said to have an ancestral claim to be
regarded as a patron of books of chivalries.
Pages:
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562